Considerettes

Near the beginning of this Wall St. Journal opinion piece, noting how car companies have been "bailed out" for decades, is this breakdown of who will own General Motors once the new restructuring is in place.

The United Auto Workers (UAW) would own 39% of GM. The federal government would own 50%. The creditors will be shafted with just 10%.

Emphasis mine.  And then there’s this, from Merriam-Webster.

Main Entry:

so·cial·ism 

Pronunciation:

\ˈsō-shə-ˌli-zəm\

Function:

noun

Date:

1837

1: any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods

Emphasis mine, again.  The two emphases appear to be synonymous.  When speaking of the problems in the auto industry back in November, Rahm Emanuel was quoted.

“Rule one: Never allow a crisis to go to waste,” Mr. Emanuel said in an interview on Sunday. “They are opportunities to do big things.”

Yeah, I’d say remaking the entire American economy qualifies as a "big thing".  The only way I see this as not becoming a permanent thing is if the experiment fails because GM (and the UAW) still fails.  If not, it’s going to be a wild ride as the government decides to nationalize more and more "for the good of the people".

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Health care and any overhauling thereof should not be done lightly.  It should not be rushed through Congress, like, say, the TARP bill was.  This is a big deal.

Well, apparently Obama thinks it’s too big to fail.

President Obama and his Democratic allies in Congress are poised to trample Republican opposition to his health care bill with a controversial legislative tactic known as reconciliation.

The fast-track process would protect Obama’s ambitious plan to overhaul the U.S. health care system from a potential GOP filibuster and limit the Republicans’ ability to get concessions. It also would give Democrats far more control over the specifics of the health care legislation.

Under typical Senate rules, 60 votes are needed to advance a bill, but reconciliation would enable Democrats to enact the health care plan with just a simple majority and only 20 hours of debate.

Democrats hold 56 seats in the Senate, and two independents typically vote with the party. Republicans have 41 seats, and there is one vacancy.

Republicans have complained furiously about the prospect of health care reform passing under fast-track rules. But they’re not planning to go down without a fight.

And that’s not the only ill-considered option not being properly considered.

But Democrats aren’t stopping at health care. Obama’s plan to cut private banks and other lending institutions out of the market for student loans would also move on a filibuster-free path.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Friday that most House and Senate negotiators have resolved most of their differences over a congressional budget blueprint designed to advance Obama’s agenda through Congress. The measure will set the rules on how Congress considers Obama’s agenda for the rest of the year.

Lawmakers are rushing to agree on the budget framework in time to give Obama a victory within his first 100 days in office.

The negotiations have centered on the annual congressional budget resolution, which sets the parameters for the legislation that follows. Congressional votes next week would provide a symbolic victory for Obama’s sweeping agenda to enact a universal health care system, invest in education and clean energy and cut the exploding budget deficit to manageable levels.

Obama marks his 100th day in office on Wednesday.

This is big government run amok.  All Republicans can do at this point is try to get in amendments to ameliorate the damage.  Some Congressman, and many constituents, including those at the recent Tea Parties, complain that far too many legislators didn’t actually read the bill or know what was in it.  And yet they’re going to do it again; make the same mistake twice, very deliberately.

A government big enough to make these sweeping changes in the blink of an eye is big enough to foul it up in a big way.  And there’s a better than even chance it will be fouled up the faster it’s done and the less debate there is.

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I brought this thought up in a comment on Mark’s post on torture; it’s fine to be against torture, but what do you consider torture?  John McCain, having endured the Hanoi Hilton, might have one definition.  Abu Zubaydah’s definition is to be in a cell with a stinging insect.  What about tickle torture?

Danny Carlton presents some food for thought on this subject.  I’m open to your comments on this because this really made me stop and think.

Waterboarding does no permanent, physical damage. It makes one think they are drowning, which I would imagine is an incredibly unpleasant feeling. Another unpleasant feeling–the fear that your children will be taken away from you, and you’ll never see them again. This is done daily across the US by overzealous social workers attempting to force "confessions" from parents suspected of abuse or neglect. Given the choice I think I’d prefer waterboarding.

The logic behind the Fifth Amendment is that when faced with fear, a person may very well lie about their guilt or innocence choosing imprisonment over torture or death. The result is not the truth or justice. But when the goal isn’t a guilty verdict but information needed to save lives the equation changes.

The question then becomes, is it fair or just to put a person through a mentally unpleasant event in order to extract information which can save lives? Ironically those who scream loudest against waterboarding would be those most adamantly in favor of allowing social workers unfettered power in using just as merciless and cruel techniques against parents suspected of abuse or neglect, most often based solely on an anonymous tip.

Whether we as a "civilized society" can tolerate torture has been answered by how we allow social workers and police to use mental torture on those suspected of a crime. Since waterboarding results in no actual physical harm to the person the difference then is whether we will tolerate what we allow on US citizens barely suspected of a crime to be used on known terrorists who have information that could save lives. 

Why is this even a debate?

Is torture wrong?  Seems pretty clear cut that Americans believe it is, which is good to hear.  But those on the Left berating the Bush administration then go beyond the poll results and say that Americans are against waterboarding specifically.  No, they said they were against torture, and again, it all depends on what you mean by that. 

Are you against putting a caterpillar into Zubaydah’s cell and telling him it’s a wasp?  Or are you against hanging someone by meat hooks for 3 days?  Is there a difference in those techniques?  I think there is.  Are they both torture?  Depends on your definition, I suppose.

What’s your definition, and what is it based on?

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Take two similar stories and try to figure out how the media will cover each.  With a hat tip to Newsbusters, here are the two stories:

1. A former Catholic priest comes forward Monday (4/20/09) to claim that another priest abused him as a teenager nearly 30 years ago. (The accused priest has no other similar public complaints and denies the allegations against him.)

2. A former school teacher was sentenced Wednesday (4/22/09) after pleading no contest to eight felony counts, including having sex with two girls under the age of 16. The man "admitted to having intercourse with the girls, performing oral sex with the teens and taking extremely explicit nude photographs of his victims — including pictures of him with one of the girls - before sending the images over the Internet."

OK, they’re not entirely equivalent.  The priest story is from 3 decades ago and the teacher story is from this month.  OK, and the priest denies the allegations while the teacher is being sentenced.  So given that, what was the disparity in coverage?

NewsBusters answers:

Now it’s quiz time! To which story did the Los Angeles Times devote two generous color photos and a 640-word article? Which story did the Times totally ignore?

If you’ve been a close follower of this issue here at NewsBusters, you already know the answer. The Times loudly trumpeted the case of the Catholic priests, even though the original story was reported three years ago (!). Meanwhile, it totally ignored the story of the teacher (Contra Costa Times, 4/23/09; Long Beach Press-Telegram, 11/5/08).

In addition, at Google news, the story of the priests returns "about 128" results. The story of the teacher? One.

We’ll say it again: It seems the most important element to the Times when reporting the awful abuse of children is whether the words "priest," "bishop," or "Cardinal" is in someone’s job title.

Given the Google results, it’s not just the Times that has this ailment.  It’s almost journalists have some blind spot when covering negative stories on government schools and / or a hot spot when it comes to negative stories regarding religion in general and Christianity in particular. 

I’m sure there’s a logical explanation.

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Kevin Roose, student at the ivy league and liberal-leaning Brown University in Providence, RI, decided to go "undercover" at a religious conservative school and write about his observations.  And what more religiously conservative than Liberty University, founded by none other than Jerry Falwell.

To Roose’s credit, it was not his intent to take the path of least resistance.

"As a responsible American citizen, I couldn’t just ignore the fact that there are a lot of Christian college students out there," said Roose, 21, now a Brown senior. "If I wanted my education to be well-rounded, I had to branch out and include these people that I just really had no exposure to."

[…]

He was determined to not mock the school, thinking it would be too easy — and unfair. He aimed to immerse himself in the culture, examine what conservative Christians believe and see if he could find some common ground. He had less weighty questions too: How did they spend Friday nights? Did they use Facebook? Did they go on dates? Did they watch "Gossip Girl?"

I would encourage you to read the whole article.  He seems to have been generally fair about the whole thing, a feeling that Chancellor Jerry Falwell Jr. shares.  He even got an interview, while still "undercover", with the elder Falwell himself.

And once he got to know the people, and what they really thought and believed, there were some changes he noticed in himself.  He didn’t necessarily agree with them politically, but…

Roose said his Liberty experience transformed him in surprising ways.

When he first returned to Brown, he’d be shocked by the sight of a gay couple holding hands — then be shocked at his own reaction. He remains stridently opposed to Falwell’s worldview, but he also came to understand Falwell’s appeal.

Once ambivalent about faith, Roose now prays to God regularly — for his own well-being and on behalf of others. He said he owns several translations of the Bible and has recently been rereading meditations from the letters of John on using love and compassion to solve cultural conflicts.

He’s even considering joining a church.

Not the outcome one would expect if Liberty was rife with homophobic, intolerant ignoramuses.  In fact, the article notes that one "aggressively anti-gay" student was an "outcast on the hall, not a role model". 

I imagine this would be an interesting read.  Amazon is selling it, and I found a review from Publisher’s Weekly on it with this odd line:

He trains himself to control his foul language and even begins to pray and study the Bible regularly, much to the bewilderment of his liberal Quaker parents.

Is it bewildering to his liberal Quaker parents that he would pray and study the Bible?  Or bewildering to them that prayer and Bible study would be found at Liberty University?  Either of those option seems strangely close-minded.  There may be another, but I’m hard-pressed to figure it out.

Roose has a blog on the Amazon site and I peeked at some of the entries.  Most had to deal with his book tour and a giveaway promotion, but this entry written at Easter, entitled "Why you need to know the Bible (even if you’re an atheist)" was another example of how his time at Liberty had affected him. 

Liberty University could possibly be termed the capitol of the Religious Right, and, as I said, given what you hear from media and pundits, you’d not expect this sort of outcome.  And yet an open-minded student walks in and comes out with a deeper appreciation for God and His Word.  The rest of the liberal punditry would do well to figure out why they’re stereotype is so wrong.

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Yahoo! bought the Geocities free web hosting services back in 1999, when it was a really big thing.  Lately, traffic has been consistently dropping and so later this year, Yahoo! will close it down.

My first homepage was on Geocities.  It still exists here, with old news, outdated e-mail addresses, and a pointer to the URL where the next incarnation would be (which, itself, was long ago removed as the ISP went away). 

Anyway, just saying good-bye to an old friend.

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Shire Network News #161 has been released. The feature interview is with old Shire Network News friend Andrew Ian Dodge who’s moved back to the US and is now a regular correspondent and pundit on Pajamas Media. Click here for the show notes, links, and ways to listen to the show; directly from the web site, by downloading the mp3 file, or by subscribing with your podcatcher of choice.

Below is the text of my commentary.

Hi, this is Doug Payton for Shire Network News, asking you to "Consider This!"

First, Janet Napolitano, Sec. of Homeland Security, decided not to use the term "terrorism", preferring the term "man-caused disaster".  She told the German magazine Der Spiegel that it was nuanced, and she did that to demonstrate a change in policy from being fearful to being prepared.

Ah, so changing the names of things now announce policy decisions, instead of the traditional, old-fashioned, outdated way of explaining changes in policy.  That’s been done before, though.  The phrase "final solution" comes to mind.

Look, a house burned down by arsonist is a "man-caused disaster".  Killing 3000 people, destroying 2 of the largest skyscrapers in the world, and damaging a military complex, is much, much more than that. 

Ms. Napolitano’s use of the English language is a "man-caused disaster".  I wonder what the National Organization for Women thinks of this particular, sexist phrase.  Maybe they’re not so worried about it, assuming that all real disasters would be man-caused.

But it doesn’t stop there.  More recently, the Obama administration signaled a change in policy by no longer using the terms "Long War" or "Global War on Terror".  Instead, the term "Overseas Contingency Operation" should be used.  Catchy, eh?  Just stumbles off the tongue.

Now, there’s still a question as to who exactly in the administration changed this policy.  The memo went to Pentagon staffers, but it said the change came from the Office of Management and Budget, and as we know, the OMB is the source of all national security policy and buzzword creation.  But the OMB said, no, it wasn’t us, just the opinion of some "career civil servant".

Well apparently, that fellow isn’t done yet.  Thus we present you, from the home office in Camillus, NY, the Top 9 other euphemisms proposed by an anonymous career civil-servant

9 - The term "tax cuts" will now be called "Unamerican Activities".

8 - "Paycheck Bonus" shall become "A Congressional Oversight".

7 - "Disagreeing with President Obama" will now be called "Racism".

6 - "Affirmative Action" will be replaced with "Universal Diversity Adjustment".

5 - "Financial Collapse" shall now be known as "Republican Party Evil Master Plan".

4 - "Supporting Israel’s right to exist" will now be called "Racism".

3 - "Militant Islamists" are to be referred to as "Misunderstood Peaceniks".

2 - "Western Civilization" will now be called "Racism".

And the number one euphemism proposed by an anonymous career civil-servant:

What is now "Socialism" will henceforth go by the name "Capitalism".

Y’know, we need a more truthful title for this war.  It’s not a war against a tactic — terrorism — it’s really a war against radical, militant Islam.  But that’s not catchy enough for the short-attention-span audience.  And it might offend radical, militant Islamists.

This reminds me of a little Shakespeare.  From "Romeo and Juliet", Juliet opines about Romeo:

‘Tis but thy name that is my enemy.
Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
What’s Montague? it is nor hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!
What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.

I’m sorry, Juliet, but whilst terrorism by any other name would smell as foul, words doth still mean things.  ‘Tis true that Romeo was not thine enemy; simply his name.  Yet presently, our enemies themselves seek to smite us.  I pray thee that we shouldst speak the truth when we speak their name.  Considerest thou this.

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You’ve may have heard by now some of the fallout from Miss California’s answer to a same-sex marriage question from one of the Miss USA judges, Perez Hilton.  If not, it’s probably because, like me, you didn’t watch the Miss USA pageant (or because, also like me, didn’t even know it was on).  What happened there has put on display for all to see what happens when you stand up for beliefs which are contrary to the liberal line.

Perez Hilton asked Carrie Prejean, "Vermont recently became the fourth state to legalize same-sex marriage," he said. "Do you think every state should follow suit, why or why not."  Prejean answered:

I think it’s great Americans are able to choose one or the other.  We live in a land that you can choose same-sex marriage or opposite marriage. And you know what in my country, in my family I think that I believe that a marriage should be between a man and a woman. No offense to anybody there, but that’s how I was raised and that’s how I think it should be, between a man and a woman.

While starting out with a little fumbling for words, she ultimately comes to her honest answer.  And that, in what is now a pageant fully engulfed in liberal dogma, was her downfall. 

According to this ABC News article, the initial boos were ultimately overcome by applause.  However, Hilton was taken by surprise.

"I was floored," Hilton told ABCNews.com Monday. "I haven’t said this before, but to her credit, I applaud her for her honesty. However, she is not a politician, she’s a hopeful Miss USA. Miss USA should represent everyone. Her answer alienated millions of gay and lesbian Americans, their families and their supporters."

Instead, I suppose, he wanted an answer that alienated tens of millions of those who do not support same-sex marriage.  If it’s about the numbers, Hilton is currently on the down-side of that.  If it’s about not alienating people, Prejean’s answer, no matter what it was, would alienate some, so she actually did well on that front, if that’s what you’re going to judge her by.

So what answer would Hilton have preferred; one that would be less political and represented everyone?

Hilton said Prejean could have chosen an answer that he believed would have been less political. When he asked Miley Cyrus the same question on Twitter after the show, he was surprised by her response: "I believe that EVERYONE deserves to be happy. That’s all I’m saying."

Comparing Cyrus and Prejean, Hilton said, "A 16-year-old gave a better answer. If she [Prejean] had said those two sentences, that would have been a better answer."

On his video blog, he offered another alternate answer. "I would have said, ‘Hmm, Perez, that’s a great question, that’s a very hot topic in our country right now. And I think that’s a question that each state should decide for themselves."

He was looking for politically correct (i.e. liberal) and / or one that is, in fact, more political.  Not to mention, what if you don’t actually believe that answer?  The truth, to these left-wing elites, means little.

It wasn’t just this gossip columnist that was irked by her answer.  This aversion to a truthful answer extends to the Miss California organization itself.

Keith Lewis, who runs the Miss California competition, released a statement to the media in response to Prejean’s answer last night.

"As co-director of the Miss California USA, I am personally saddened and hurt that Miss California believes marriage rights belong only to a man and a woman," said Lewis in a statement. "I believe all religions should be able to ordain what unions they see fit. I do not believe our government should be able to discriminate against anyone and religious beliefs have no politics in the Miss California family."

Co-director Shanna Moakler, the 1995 Miss USA, told the media that she fully supported Lewis’ statement.

Apparently, the Miss California organization can’t handle an honest answer that diverges from the liberal line without issuing a statement and denigrating their own representative.  At least Hilton had the guts to give Prejean credit for honesty before he tore her up.

And that honest also cost her more than just national scorn from the Left.

"She lost it because of that question. She was definitely the front-runner before that," Hilton said, adding that he’s "very happy with whom the judges chose," Miss North Carolina’s Kristen Dalton.

He’s a judge.  He would know.  He didn’t want her to politicize her answer, but he politicized the who event. 

From the Nobel Prize committee, who made past Peace Prize choices to tweak George W. Bush, to the Miss USA Pageant, the Left is showing just how much they tolerate dissent.  They don’t.  Oh the irony.

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I’ve mentioned Lila Rose before. She’s the adult that poses as an underage girl at Planned Parenthood clinics and finds out how they deal with a statutory rape victim.  She’s got another video showing that PP just follows the money.

HotAir has the video.

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No, this isn’t a comparison of the Earth to the Sun.  Take a close look.  (Click on it for the source.)

In 90 days, Obama’s Cabinet has to come up with what amounts to a gnat’s worth of saving.  At this rate, by the time Obama’s first term is up, we might have saved a fly. 

In the meantime, they gleefully swallow the camel.

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Another step in the wrong direction.

In a significant shift, White House and Treasury Department officials now say they can stretch what is left of the $700 billion financial bailout fund further than they had expected a few months ago, simply by converting the government’s existing loans to the nation’s 19 biggest banks into common stock.

Converting those loans to common shares would turn the federal aid into available capital for a bank — and give the government a large ownership stake in return.

While the option appears to be a quick and easy way to avoid a confrontation with Congressional leaders wary of putting more money into the banks, some critics would consider it a back door to nationalization, since the government could become the largest shareholder in several banks.

Another writer, whom I read last week and can’t find the link to, noted that you don’t have to have full-blown government ownership of businesses to have what amounts to socialism; you just have to own the financial system that all those businesses get their financing from.  Like I said before, if you don’t want to call it "socialism", fair enough, but please don’t call it "capitalism".

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Michael Graham, writing in the Boston Herald, lays it out for Homeland Security.

Janet Napolitano was right. There were hatemongers at the Tea Party rallies on Tax Day. They called themselves “reporters.”

The Department of Homeland Security released a pre-emptive “assessment report” on the dangers of “right-wing extremists” just a week before the tax protest rallies. According to DHS, these potentially include pro-lifers, supporters of border security and that notoriously unstable group - U.S. military veterans.

And I can report that there were, in fact, quite a few vets at our Tea Party at Long Wharf. But other than their crazy notion that spending our kids into an $11 trillion hole is wrong, they didn’t appear to be unhinged.

The same cannot be said for the reporters.

He hits the same highlights as many bloggers about CNN reporter Susan Roesgen who bad-mouthed and argued with protesters.  Unlike in this video, when a Bush mask with a Hitler mustache and devil horns was simply termed a "likeness" of the President.  No outrage then, but today she specifically calls them out.  Fair and balanced?

And in a case closer to (his) home, an example of willful blindness.

As hard as it is to believe, until yesterday The Boston Globe-Democrat had not run a story about the national Tea Party movement. As Howard Kurtz noted in The Washington Post, a newspaper in “the city famed for the original Tea Party” had ignored the story entirely.

Like President Barack Obama, who claimed on the morning of April 15 that he knew nothing about the Tea Party protests, the Globe-Democrat played dumb.

But once 1,500 local citizens and I re-enacted the original Tea Party at Boston Harbor, the Globies couldn’t avoid it any longer. They had to cover this breaking, local story, and so they did:

From Kentucky.

Yep. The Globe-Democrat’s only story about the national Boston Tea Party movement was an AP story datelined Frankfort, Ky.

That’s like covering the Kentucky Derby from Suffolk Downs. Yet the Globe-Democrat did cover a story on anti-bottled-water activists recently dumping bottled water into the harbor.

But as one Tea Partier quipped: “If Obama had been the king of England, the Globe wouldn’t have covered the American Revolution.”

In.  The.  Tank.  And drowning.

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While there have been recent scattered protests (dubbed “Tea Parties” after a rather famous one in Boston one 235 years ago) against huge government expansion, economic control, bailouts, borrowing and spending, the day of the individual tax deadline, April 15th, was a day of concerted protests.  The “Tax Day Tea Party” was an event held at over 500 locations all across the United States.

In case you’re still wondering what all the fuss was about, a budget deficit graph may help.  (Click on the image for the source.)

Yes, we’ve had budget deficits in the past.  These and the ones to come are in a class all by themselves.  Hence the outrage from all over the country.

From Michigan to South Carolina to California (where the state GOP chair got boos) to Ohio to Kentucky to Atlanta (the largest crowd in the nation, as far as I know, at over 15,000).  This was no localized phenomenon.  This was a national movement.

More below the fold…

Read the rest of this entry »

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From Mike Lester (click for a larger version):

A federal holiday commemorating the birth of a major religious figure, and we’re not a Christian nation.  No, this does not mean that we all believe the same things, but it does acknowledge our roots.

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From President Obama’s speech today, regarding the economy:

Now we’ve got a lot of work to do. There is a parable at the end of the Sermon on the Mount that tells the story of two men.  The first built his house on a pile of sand, and it was soon destroyed when the storm hit.  But the second is known as the wise man, for when "…the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house…it fell not:  for it was founded upon a rock." It was founded upon a rock.

We cannot rebuild this economy on the same pile of sand.  We must build our house upon a rock.  We must lay a new foundation for growth and prosperity – a foundation that will move us from an era of borrow and spend to one where we save and invest; where we consume less at home and send more exports abroad. 

(Hat tip: Erick Erickson)  So just as Christ is the rock to build our house on, Obama creates an analogy with his economic policies.  This is not a case of appealing to our religious beliefs or our consciences; many a President has done that.  Foreign, domestic and even economic policy, may be justified by a President because of our moral values. 

This, however, is different.  This is drawing a parallel between the sureness of what we build on Christ with the artificial sureness of what we build on government.  He’s not saying that these policies are right by appealing to religion.  He’s saying that they are a rock to hold firm to.  They are not.

(And what irony that he talks about moving away from borrow and spend right after setting world records in that field.)

Y’know, maybe all those folks have a Messiah complex about Barack Obama because he had one first.

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